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Despite pouring mucho dinero down the black hole of the NEA/public school wing of the Democratic Party, above average 4th graders of 4 years ago have grown into the under-performing 8th graders of today.

No Improvement In US Science, Math Scores - Average Vs Rest Of World

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001205/sc/life_tests_dc_1.html

12-5-00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's eighth graders continue to score just average in math and science compared to the rest of the world, a new round of international testing released on Tuesday showed.

Despite widespread embarrassment and what was supposed to be a push to bring U.S. youngsters up to the level of students in Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands, results from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat (TIMSS-R) put the United States squarely in the middle. Eight graders are generally aged 12 to 14.

``Between 1995 and 1999, the United States, as well as the majority of nations, found no change in either math or science achievement,'' Patrick
Gonzales, TIMSS-R project officer at the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, said in a telephone interview.

``In 1999, eighth graders in the United States performed similarly to Britain, better than Italy, but were outperformed by Japan, Canada and the Russian Federation,'' he added.

``In science, the United States again did better than Italy, performed about the same as the Russian Federation, but was outperformed by Japan, (Britain) and Canada.''

Gonzales said the last TIMSS, done in 1994 and 1995, showed that U.S. fourth graders, who are generally aged 8 to 10, scored particularly high compared to other nations.

``The fourth graders of 1995 in 1999 are eighth graders,'' Gonzales said. The hope was that these students would do well when, as eighth graders in 1999, they took the test again.

But they did not.

``Eighth-grade students perform lower than they did as fourth graders in math and science,'' Gonzales said. He stressed that U.S. students were tested as a group -- the students who took the test in 1994-95 were not necessarily the same students tested in 1999.
 

Now the key is to find out what goes wrong in the four years between fourth and eighth grades. "While at the national level, you don't see any change over the four years in the United States, for some particular subpopulations, in particular eighth-grade black math students, there are big improvements," Gonzales said.

``Students whose mothers had attended some college or completed some college also had increases in their math achievements, so there are some bubbling, some percolation of change in mathematics.''

The most recent test involved 42 nations, compared to 38 nations that took part in 1994-95, Gonzales said. Several industrialized countries, such as France and Germany, did not take part.

Gonzales said the scores suggest not that the United States is falling behind, but that other nations start picking up efforts in math and science education as students get older.

``That does not mean U.S. students are dumber, that they did not learn anything or that the learning is being sucked out of their brains,'' he said.

``The other nations start to kick in. Eighth graders in other nations are moving through topics ... the pace, the acceleration puts a group of them above the United States.''